Thus far, research suggests that efficiency processes within the knowledge-information store may be particularly susceptible to alcoholism. For example, Nixon and Parsons (1991) used the “plant task” to determine whether alcoholics and controls exhibit differences in abstraction ability, which, as noted above, is housed within the knowledge-information store. This test has more ecological validity than other common tests of abstraction—its relevance to real-world functioning is more apparent than most laboratory tasks used to assess different aspects of cognitive functioning.
